How-To Geek
View the Real Links Behind Shortened URLs in Chrome
When you encounter shortened URLs there is always that worry in the back of your mind about where they really lead to. Now you can get a “sneak peek” at the real links behind those URLs with the View Thru extension for Google Chrome.
The URL Shortening services officially supported at this time are: bit.ly, cli.gs, ff.im, goo.gl, is.gd, nyti.ms, ow.ly, post.ly, su.pr, & tinyurl.com.
Before
When you encounter a shortened URL you are pretty much on your own in deciding whether to trust that link or not. It would really be nice if you could just hover your mouse over those links and know where they will lead ahead of time.
After
Once you have the extension installed you are ready to access that link viewing goodness. Please note that you will need to reload any pages that were open prior to installing the extension.
For our first example we chose a shortened URL from “bit.ly”. As you can see the entire link behind the shortened URL is displayed very nicely…no hidden surprises there!
Note: There are no options to worry with for the extension.
Another perfect result for the “goo.gl URL” shown below. View Thru will certainly remove a lot of the stress related to clicking on shortened URLs.
Bonus Find
Just out of curiosity we looked for a shortened URL not listed as being officially supported at this time. We found one with the “http://nyti.ms/” domain and View Thru showed the link perfectly…so be sure to give it a try on other services too.
Conclusion
If you worry about where a shortened URL will really lead you then the View Thru extension can help alleviate that stress.
Links
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- By Asian Angel on 04/27/10
Comments (4)
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Not to be a jerk, Asian Angel, but you have a typo in the first paragraph: Instead of “sneak peak” I think you mean “sneak peek”.
A peek is a look/glance/what you do when you’re stalking someone and don’t want them to see you.
A peak is part of a mountain.
On second thought, maybe you meant I could get a ninja mountain. That would be AWESOME.
@mbear
LOL! Hilarious. Will fix the typo =)
@mbear – That was definitely one “sneaky peak” to have been able to sneak up and peek at me like that. ~__^ Hmmm…ninja mountains! I bet that would make a fun article! ^__^
All this talk of Ninja mountains reminds me of “Ninja Assassin”. That definitely had ninjas on mountains.